CLICK FOR FULL VIEW — Take an Hour and Contemplate Your Ego – 2023 Stephen Gibb, 96″ x 48″, oil on panel.
The story behind Stephen Gibb’s Pop Surrealism Lowbrow painting: Take an Hour and Contemplate Your Ego.
Pop Surrealism Lowbrow Painting Explores the Ego
The Concept: The Gaze of the Long Now
Over the years, Stuart Brand, co-founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog has founded several organizations, of which the Long Now Foundation has significant relevance to my project. The Long Now Foundation aims to promote “slower/better” thinking as a counterpoint to what it views as today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset.
Adopting a similar “slower is better” attitude, I undertook a career-long ambition in 2023 to create an artwork that demands to be approached slowly and deliberately, in a quiet, contemplative frame of mind. With the idea of inviting the viewer to devote a considerably longer amount of time engaged with the painting than our at-a-glance culture is used to, I’m challenging one of the very cornerstones of our on-demand, drive-thru, overnight-delivery, instant-gratification society. Our need for speed may be flawed.
In my art practice, it is in these quiet, contemplative moments that the most fertile inspiration comes from. Getting there is the first step — far removed from the doom scroll of the mobile phone, the opinion-as-truth news media and the endless stream of social media noise. I was struck by an exhibit I had several years ago, how most people just breezed by, maybe politely pausing for a few seconds at each painting, yet others would stand for 15 minutes and immerse themselves into the artwork. Which begs the question: What was the connection they made that the others didn’t?
Were they able to view the art in a quiet state, already removed from the impulse and pull of their conditioning, governed by the perpetual quest of “what’s next”? When we live in a culture that constantly inundates us with information from the outside, how can we even take time to process it, let alone access our own information that is generated from the inside? My painting aims to create a situation where the viewer can reconnect with that inner self and refamiliarize themselves with the beauty of their own imagination.
The second motivation was to create a painting so compelling that it couldn’t be ignored. The irony is not lost on me — taking on such an ego-centric project, which is centred thematically on the ego seems a bit lofty and pretentious but is one supported by neuroscience. Brain scans of people confronting an overwhelming or confusing image light up like fireworks, their minds “jumpstarted” as they try to make sense of what they see. Entering this Gamma wave state of mind is where peak concentration and optimal information processing takes place. Human nature fundamentally compels us to extract meaning from things that confound us, especially when the message is not readily apparent or spoon-fed. The scale and complexity of the painting at the very least demands a more than cursory glance from even the most jaded of art connoisseurs.
Employing my standard approach to painting, which is often referred to as Pop Surrealism Lowbrow the title of the artwork is also the subtitle of the proposed exhibit — The Gaze of the Long Now: Take an Hour and Contemplate Your Ego.
Using the “ego” as the anchor for what the content of the painting examines, I employ an allegorical and symbolist approach of connecting images to convey the concepts chosen for the subject. Not always apparent, the images have a bifurcating effect, leading the viewers down their own pathways and rabbit holes of exploration and comprehension. Just like an “apple” means something different to every person — you may think of computers, the Beatles, William Tell, Snow White, grandma’s pies, etc. — so is the power of any image. Allowing yourself to follow those associations and linkages in your own self-discovery, is the real connecting force and magic of art.
The ego is represented in a raw psychological form as understood in my own naïve way, viewed through many facets of pop culture and aspects of the human experience. The broad concepts are encrypted in imagery that transforms the figurative into the literal.
Pop Surrealism Lowbrow Painting Explores the Ego
CLICK FOR FULL VIEW — Take an Hour and Contemplate Your Ego – 2023 Stephen Gibb, 96″ x 48″, oil on panel.
The story behind Stephen Gibb’s Pop Surrealism Lowbrow painting: Take an Hour and Contemplate Your Ego.
Pop Surrealism Lowbrow Painting Explores the Ego
The Concept: The Gaze of the Long Now
Over the years, Stuart Brand, co-founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog has founded several organizations, of which the Long Now Foundation has significant relevance to my project. The Long Now Foundation aims to promote “slower/better” thinking as a counterpoint to what it views as today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset.
Adopting a similar “slower is better” attitude, I undertook a career-long ambition in 2023 to create an artwork that demands to be approached slowly and deliberately, in a quiet, contemplative frame of mind. With the idea of inviting the viewer to devote a considerably longer amount of time engaged with the painting than our at-a-glance culture is used to, I’m challenging one of the very cornerstones of our on-demand, drive-thru, overnight-delivery, instant-gratification society. Our need for speed may be flawed.
In my art practice, it is in these quiet, contemplative moments that the most fertile inspiration comes from. Getting there is the first step — far removed from the doom scroll of the mobile phone, the opinion-as-truth news media and the endless stream of social media noise. I was struck by an exhibit I had several years ago, how most people just breezed by, maybe politely pausing for a few seconds at each painting, yet others would stand for 15 minutes and immerse themselves into the artwork. Which begs the question: What was the connection they made that the others didn’t?
Were they able to view the art in a quiet state, already removed from the impulse and pull of their conditioning, governed by the perpetual quest of “what’s next”? When we live in a culture that constantly inundates us with information from the outside, how can we even take time to process it, let alone access our own information that is generated from the inside? My painting aims to create a situation where the viewer can reconnect with that inner self and refamiliarize themselves with the beauty of their own imagination.
The second motivation was to create a painting so compelling that it couldn’t be ignored. The irony is not lost on me — taking on such an ego-centric project, which is centred thematically on the ego seems a bit lofty and pretentious but is one supported by neuroscience. Brain scans of people confronting an overwhelming or confusing image light up like fireworks, their minds “jumpstarted” as they try to make sense of what they see. Entering this Gamma wave state of mind is where peak concentration and optimal information processing takes place. Human nature fundamentally compels us to extract meaning from things that confound us, especially when the message is not readily apparent or spoon-fed. The scale and complexity of the painting at the very least demands a more than cursory glance from even the most jaded of art connoisseurs.
Take an Hour and Contemplate Your Ego
Employing my standard approach to painting, which is often referred to as Pop Surrealism Lowbrow the title of the artwork is also the subtitle of the proposed exhibit — The Gaze of the Long Now: Take an Hour and Contemplate Your Ego.
Using the “ego” as the anchor for what the content of the painting examines, I employ an allegorical and symbolist approach of connecting images to convey the concepts chosen for the subject. Not always apparent, the images have a bifurcating effect, leading the viewers down their own pathways and rabbit holes of exploration and comprehension. Just like an “apple” means something different to every person — you may think of computers, the Beatles, William Tell, Snow White, grandma’s pies, etc. — so is the power of any image. Allowing yourself to follow those associations and linkages in your own self-discovery, is the real connecting force and magic of art.
The ego is represented in a raw psychological form as understood in my own naïve way, viewed through many facets of pop culture and aspects of the human experience. The broad concepts are encrypted in imagery that transforms the figurative into the literal.
Pop Surrealism Lowbrow Painting Explores the Ego